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Next Best Picture editor-in-chief and critic Matt Neglia wrote that “Artificial” is “as entertaining as it is terrifying.” “It’s a brilliantly written human story about power, control, ambition, and greed that might be the most urgently relevant film of our time. Andrew Garfield delivers one of his most unsettling and transformative performances as Sam Altman, equally capturing his disarming charm and unnerving malice.”

He continued: “Yura Borisov is magnificent as the brilliant mind behind OpenAI, wrestling with the moral implications of the creation he has helped unleash upon the world with intelligence and empathy. Damon Albarn’s electronic, atmospheric score perfectly sets the mood for this tech-driven narrative, while Guadagnino’s cinematic flourishes are bountiful, resulting in what may be his funniest and scariest film to date. Provocative, engaging, and downright horrifying, it’s the movie of the moment that we may not even be able to look back on if the vision of the future it presents comes true.”

Southhampton Playhouse artistic director and former IndieWire critic Eric Kohn called the film a “pitch-perfect dark comedy.” “Andrew Garfield walks a fine line between movie monster, buffoonish mogul, and evil genius. A fun/scary ride that embodies the paradox at its center,” he wrote on X.

“Guadagnino guts Silicon Valley with his obsessive pulse & a powerful farce in which Andrew Garfield completely shines,” wrote film critic Jairo Jiménez. “A feverish, visceral corporate drama that proves what is truly artificial was never in the machines, but in the boardroom. An essential film.”

Variety’s Clayton Davis wrote that “Artificial” is “Guadagnino’s best film in a decade” and “Andrew Garfield and Yura Borisov soar to new heights. Loved.”

Set during the tumultuous time when Altman, OpenAI’s CEO (played by Andrew Garfield), was fired and then rehired by the AI giant in 2023, “Artificial” has faced its own challenges getting to theaters; in June, Neon closed a deal to complete the $40 million film after Amazon MGM Studios dropped the project months earlier after the company signed a major partnership with OpenAI, including a $50 billion investment.

Despite how hot-button some may feel the film is, Guadagnino told Vulture that he wasn’t “afraid” of Altman’s — or anyone depicted in the film’s — response. “I think that people that have a lot of power should be very much aware that you must be responsible for the community.”

And though Altman never met Garfield, the tech CEO admitted in a recent Vanity Fair cover story that the actor “did walk like me” when he ran into production filming near his house. “One morning, I was walking down the street to get coffee and there were all these cameras and there was a guy dressed exactly like me with my same backpack walking so much that I felt I was in some weird glitch of the simulation or something,” Altman told Vanity Fair. “It was very strange.”

“Artificial” reunited Guadagnino with Garfield, who last worked with the director in 2025’s “After the Hunt.” Ike Barinholtz stars as co-founder Elon Musk, Monica Barbaro plays former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, “Anora” breakout Yura Borisov is former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and Mark Rylance plays Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton. Jason Schwartzman, Zosia Mamet, Cooper Hoffman, Chris O’Dowd, Cooper Koch and Billie Lourd also appear in the film. “SNL” alum Simon Rich penned the script.

Ahead of the premiere’s conclusion, Variety exclusively reported that Neon’s awards campaign for the film will include Garfield and Rylance competing in the supporting actor category and Borisov campaigning in lead actor. Barbaro will vie for supporting actress.

“Artificial” opens in theaters on Christmas Day from Neon. Check out first reactions in the posts below.

Insiders say the new deal for Bloys comes as the exec wants to demonstrate his commitment to the new structure he’s about to run at Skydance, and vice versa. News of Bloys’ new deal came the same day that the new Skydance unveiled its corporate structure.

In announcing Bloys’ expanded role overseeing HBO Max and Paramount+, Skydance noted that included “original programming as well as strategy, operations, communications and performance across the company’s streaming platforms.”

Bloys had most recently signed a five-year deal in October 2022 than kept him with the company through most of 2027. Terms of his new deal were not revealed, only that it was a “multiyear” pact.

Besides Bloys, on the television front Skydance confirmed that JB Perrette (previously Warner Bros. Discovery’s CEO and president of global streaming and games) would serve as co-chair and chief business officer of both Skydance TV and Skydance DTC, while George Cheeks (previously chair of TV media at Paramount Skydance) would serve as co-chair and chief content officer, Skydance TV.

News that Bloys (who previously served as CEO and chief content officer of HBO and HBO Max) would add Paramount+ to his stripes came last week after Paramount direct-to-consumer chair Cindy Holland told colleagues Tuesday that she would be leaving.

Meanwhile, more of the new structure under Bloys should be announced on Tuesday, as Skydance said it would reveal its new executive leadership team “will be issued soon after close.”

Bloys first joined HBO in 2004 and eventually became exec VP of HBO programming; he became president of HBO programming in 2016 and later added HBO Max to his oversight. Under his watch, HBO and HBO Max series have included “The Pitt,” “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” “The White Lotus,” “The Last of Us,” “House of the Dragon,” “DTF St. Louis,” “The Penguin,” “Succession,” “Chernobyl,” “Barry,” “Girls,” “Veep,” “Insecure,” “Mare of Easttown” and “Big Little Lies,” with “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” among shows in the pipeline.

The Ankler was first to report Bloys’ deal renewal. %!s()

Macs have never exactly been gaming machines. For a long time, not only was the hardware lacking, but many developers never bothered to bring their titles to macOS. But the situation is different now with Apple silicon — the M-series chips are powerful, and there are new tools to easily port PC games to Mac. 

But can a MacBook really handle demanding games? Technically, it can, but there are many other factors you should consider before choosing a Mac as your gaming machine. Yes, the gaming landscape on macOS is much better now than it was six years ago, but there's still a huge gap between Macs and Windows PCs.

What a MacBook can and can't handle

Filipe Espósito for Engadget

Thanks to Apple silicon, hardware is no longer a Mac's weak point. If you have one of the latest Macs, such as an M5 MacBook Pro, it will likely run most games well — even some big names you might not have expected. Apple lists Assassin's Creed Shadows, Dead Island 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 as some of the titles a Mac can run natively. The list of Mac-compatible games has been growing a lot, with more and more titles coming to macOS alongside their Windows versions.

And even if your favorite game doesn't have a macOS port, there may still be an alternative. Apple has created something called the Gaming Porting Toolkit, which helps developers port Windows games to macOS using native translations. While this tool is intended for developers, anyone can use it to run PC games on a Mac with just a few lines of code. I've been using it to run GTA V on my M4 Pro MacBook Pro, and the results are pretty solid; I can get a steady 60 frames per second with high graphics settings. It's not perfect and there are a few glitches here and there, but it works well overall for a game being translated in real-time.

If you're not sure which games your Mac can run, it's worth checking out MacGamingDB. This is a community-run website that provides compatibility details for thousands of titles, making it easy to quickly find out how your favorite game performs on a specific Mac model. It saves you a lot of time, since you don't have to download gigabytes of data just to find out the game doesn't work.

Which MacBook to buy, and when to look elsewhere

Filipe Espósito for Engadget

If you really want to game on a MacBook, the MacBook Pro is your best option. Even the base model with the M5 Pro chip and 24GB of RAM gives you enough power to run most modern games smoothly. If you need more, you can upgrade it with an M5 Max chip, which adds more RAM and a better GPU. 

Of course, don't expect a MacBook Neo to perform the same as the latest MacBook Pro line. Both the MacBook Neo and the MacBook Air have less powerful processors and no internal fan, which makes them less suitable for running demanding games. They can still run some titles, but performance won't be ideal and you'll have to lower the resolution and graphics settings a bit.

But if you're serious about gaming, you should probably buy a PC instead. A Windows PC will likely cost you less for the same graphical power, and it will run all games natively without you having to worry about compatibility issues. You might also want to check out cloud gaming services like GeForce NOW or Xbox Cloud Gaming to stream games on your MacBook, so hardware won't be an issue. You just need a good internet connection. %!s()

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Russian gold is pouring into Hong Kong at a record pace, highlighting how Western sanctions have rerouted bullion bound for London toward China and other Asian markets. 

Hong Kong imported 112.7 tonnes of Russian-origin gold in the first seven months of 2026, according to precious metals investment firm BullionVault's analysis of data from the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. 

Imports have already surpassed the record 92.1 tonnes imported during all of 2025, and compares with just 3.3 tonnes in 2021, before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

The surge underscores how Russia's gold trade has been rerouted since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shut its producers out of major Western markets, analysts told CNBC.

Russian bullion accounted for almost 15% of Hong Kong's non-monetary gold imports in the first seven months of this year, up from just 0.6% in 2021. 

"Hong Kong has emerged as an important hub for Russia-China trade since the full-scale invasion," said Vita Spivak, senior consultant at Gatehouse Advisory Partners. "Most gold goes to Mainland China as it hasn't placed sanctions on Russian gold," she told CNBC.

"For bullion specifically, Hong Kong also offers advantages beyond sanctions circumvention. It provides direct access to the world's largest gold-consuming market," Spivak highlighted.

The London Bullion Market Association suspended all six Russian gold and silver refiners from its Good Delivery lists in March 2022. The U.S., U.K. and other Western countries subsequently imposed restrictions on Russian gold, effectively closing off markets that had previously been major destinations for the country's bullion. 

Before the war, Russia's gold industry had become heavily dependent on London. Russian gold exports to the U.K. between 2019 and 2021 were equivalent to around two-thirds of the country's mine production, according to data from BullionVault. 

"The fact that Hong Kong's official data clearly shows a steep rise in imports of Russian gold reflects the kind of support and bilateral trade for which Putin has repeatedly thanked Xi," said Adrian Ash, director of research at BullionVault.

"Russian exports of gold to the UK and other Western-sanction nations of course collapsed," Ash added.

Behind the rush

Hong Kong is a natural alternative. The city has long served as a gateway for bullion into mainland China, the world's largest gold consumer, and it is rapidly expanding its storage, clearing and trading infrastructure. 

"Hong Kong has always been an important entre-pot for gold going into China," said Rhona O'Connell, head of market analysis for EMEA and Asia at StoneX. While Shanghai has taken market share in recent years, Hong Kong is now in "a race with Singapore for hub supremacy and is about six months ahead in terms of infrastructure," she said. 

Historically, Hong Kong was the main gateway for China's gold imports, but Beijing has since opened other import hubs including Shenzhen and Beijing, reducing the city's share, according to S&P Global.

The Russian flows are arriving just as China itself is in the midst of a broader gold buying spree.

China has designated gold a "strategic mineral" and has promoted physical bullion as a store of value for households, while the People's Bank of China has continued adding to its reserves. 

S&P Global data showed that China's official gold holdings rose by more than 40 tonnes in the first half of 2026, more than double the amount purchased a year earlier.

"We do know that whether it's the PBOC or if it's the Chinese consumers, they've all been buying quite a bit of gold," Charles Chang, Greater China country lead for corporates at S&P Global Ratings, told CNBC in an interview.

"In times of high uncertainty, consumers tend to want to protect their savings, and they find gold as one vehicle for that," he said. %!s()

The first season from PK Studio Productions centers on Mosleh as Parmiss Mansour, the grad student who falls for Nava (Amanda Wear) and deals with coming out, including to her overbearing traditional Muslim family.

“What excites me about Pass the Salt is getting to add a perspective we rarely get to see within the comedy landscape: a queer Middle Eastern and more specifically Persian woman at the center of a romantic comedy. At its heart, Pass the Salt is simply a love story about two women from different backgrounds trying to figure out their relationship, while navigating their families, expectations and some overbearing parents,” Mosleh tells The Hollywood Reporter.

The Pass the Salt leads — Mosleh, Wear, Adam Fox and Nathaniel Vass — will return for the second season, as will Valeh Ashraf, Moheb Jindran and Babak Haleky. Negotiations on international sales are underway, with initial deals expected shortly.

The early second season renewal for Pass the Salt follows the breakout success of another TV series set around Canadian queer life, Heated Rivalry, which streams in Canada on Crave and stateside on HBO Max in the U.S. market. More gay, lesbian and trans comedies and rom-coms have followed, including Slo Pitch, a mockumentary about a determined coach leading their ragtag LGBTQ+ softball team on and off the field and executive produced by Elliot Page that launched on Crave last month.

The second season renewal for Pass the Salt signals the boom in Canadian queer comedies and dramas are accelerating after earlier success with Sort Of, a CBC/HBO dramedy about a gender fluid millennial who is in transition in every aspect of their life, and Schitt’s Creek, the CBC/Netflix comedy where Dan Levy played a pansexual character.

“Canada has a remarkable history of allowing queer stories to be specific, while will being universal. Shows like Schitt’s Creek, Sort Of and now Heated Rivalry have shown that audiences will embrace Canadian queer stories when creators are given the freedom to tell them authentically,” Mosleh added.

Based in Vancouver and Los Angeles, Mosleh has directed series for Hallmark, A&E, Lifetime and TF1. Her acting credits include Christmas With the Singhs and 12 Dares of Christmas TV movies, the Cast Away The Clouds feature drama and The Last of Us drama.

Mosleh is represented by Paradigm and Pacific Artists Management.